Speaker 1: Welcome back to another edition of the Frida Egg podcast,
Speaker 1: this one with Brian Silva.
Speaker 2: We did a little differently, started having a conversation and
Speaker 2: it just worked, so don't have that normal intro that
Speaker 2: we had at most of our podcasts.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening, and if you haven't already, please subscribe
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Speaker 2: It's the easiest way to stay up to date with
Speaker 2: golf and everything that's going on.
Speaker 1: So thanks again, and without further ado, here is Brian Silva.
Speaker 2: I miss a green, for example, I'm already upset when
Speaker 2: I find my ball in the bunker, I'm really upset.
Speaker 2: And when I find my.
Speaker 3: Ball in a brid egg Frida Egg, Frida Egrida, Frida
Speaker 3: bride Egg Lie, I'm about ready to on off of the.
Speaker 2: I've been out at the Western m this week, which
Speaker 2: is at Skokie Country Club. I mean, unbelievable set of greens,
Speaker 2: and you know they have this one that has this
Speaker 2: massive false front. They have a couple with them that.
Speaker 2: But you know this, this guy is complaining. I was
Speaker 2: with my buddy in a practice round and this guy's complaining.
Speaker 2: He's like, I don't understand why this is all green here.
Speaker 2: It's not like they can put a pin there. And
Speaker 2: I'm like, well, that's why your ball will roll twenty
Speaker 2: yards down the hill. You know, it's makes the whole green.
Speaker 4: You know, it's hard for people to appreciate that the green,
Speaker 4: under the best circumstances is part of the hazard on
Speaker 4: a hole. And it's better that you hear things like
Speaker 4: that than I do, because I don't hide my visual
Speaker 4: reaction when some knucklehead says something like that. You know,
Speaker 4: all they're trying to do is make every golf course
Speaker 4: in America like every other golf course in America and
Speaker 4: kind of homogenize vanilla eyes it down to the least interesting,
Speaker 4: most standard, least unexciting thing. It's unbelievable. It's such an
Speaker 4: incredible double standard. You know, of course has a really unique,
Speaker 4: beautiful clubhouse. Those people would who want to just dummy
Speaker 4: down their golf course and make it look like every
Speaker 4: other golf course would never say, you know, our clubhouse,
Speaker 4: it's really too unique. We really need to tear it
Speaker 4: down and like put up a metal butler building. Oh
Speaker 4: and then they'll say a metal a butler building. That's
Speaker 4: easier to maintain because everything that gets done. I say
Speaker 4: to people sadly, when we do a project, there's maybe
Speaker 4: ten items of interest that we're that that everyone's talking
Speaker 4: about keeping in mind throughout the entire project. And you know,
Speaker 4: bullet points or whatever you want to call them. One
Speaker 4: is the most important. It's the one that gets talked
Speaker 4: about the most, and ten is the least important, the
Speaker 4: one that gets talked about with the least I swear
Speaker 4: more often than not, characteristics of golf course design find
Speaker 4: themselves largely lodged in number ten. It's a she's how
Speaker 4: do we get the cart paths around? And you know,
Speaker 4: I hit a perfect I hit a perfect shot to
Speaker 4: this green, but because of this false front that shouldn't
Speaker 4: even be green, I ended up twenty yards back in
Speaker 4: the fair way. That's not fair. So it's fascinating, and
Speaker 4: all it proves, Andy, don't take this personally, is guys
Speaker 4: like you and me haven't done a good enough job educating. Yeah,
Speaker 4: I know, I agree, you know what I mean it's
Speaker 4: just and unfortunately we're swimming against the tide because more
Speaker 4: often than not, when a new course gets well, they
Speaker 4: don't get built anymore. But when work gets done, it
Speaker 4: really you would think their goal was to take the
Speaker 4: character out of the course, to you know, take the
Speaker 4: unique features out of the course. It's unfortunate. Now, don't
Speaker 4: get me wrong, I think this the swell work going
Speaker 4: on out there, but there still was this in ertia
Speaker 4: to make every golf course look like it was built
Speaker 4: in the nineteen sixties. And that's unfortunate.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, it's the it's really interesting. I mean
Speaker 2: I watched this kid, Cameron Jamp yesterday play and he's
Speaker 2: like one of the longest guys on you know, he'd
Speaker 2: be the longest guy on tour. He's a college kid.
Speaker 2: He kills it. And he played this four hundred yard hole.
Speaker 2: The pin was way up front on the right side
Speaker 2: and he hit driver up to like thirty yards and
Speaker 2: he was absolutely dead because you know, the way the
Speaker 2: green was, and this is a green that would never
Speaker 2: be built by.
Speaker 4: Today, right, and the way.
Speaker 2: The green was. He had a knob in front of
Speaker 2: this front pin and a knob behind it, and he
Speaker 2: had nothing. He couldn't do anything, and it's like, okay,
Speaker 2: like that was a really bad play, Like you need
Speaker 2: to have a full shot going into that green right right,
Speaker 2: And people are you know, how do you defend distance?
Speaker 2: How do you but like great green complexes defend well,
Speaker 2: because then you have to play angles and you have
Speaker 2: to have a strategy going into the hole rather than
Speaker 2: just you know, pull out driver and bludge in the course.
Speaker 2: And that's what I think those are.
Speaker 4: Those are outlandish thoughts, Andy, that you'd actually think on
Speaker 4: the tee where you want to be the best access
Speaker 4: to the green, You're you're going in the wrong direction,
Speaker 4: big guy. You know, it's all power golf. It's very sad.
Speaker 2: I sense a hint of sarcasm.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean I see why a lot of people
Speaker 4: are like that. And uh, because if you put a
Speaker 4: if you put a percentage on the number of courses
Speaker 4: in the United States that don't require that thought, that
Speaker 4: don't have of the angles, that don't have the strategy,
Speaker 4: that don't have multiple roots, I'm afraid that percentage would
Speaker 4: be above ninety percent. And so they're not used. They've
Speaker 4: never seen it before, and when they see it, they
Speaker 4: find it odd because they don't see it. It's you know,
Speaker 4: I can't do a project without trying to force a
Speaker 4: stupid punch bowl green in on it. And people say, well,
Speaker 4: what the fuck is that, because well it's a punch
Speaker 4: bowl green. Have you other been to Scotland? Every course
Speaker 4: kind of has one, and there were these two knuckleheads
Speaker 4: named MacDonald and Rayner who used to do them. And
Speaker 4: these are the names of the courses. You know they've
Speaker 4: done them on. Oh, I've heard of those courses. So
Speaker 4: it's it's interesting crafts.
Speaker 2: How did you get into golf course architecture?
Speaker 4: My dad was in light construction. Well, he started out
Speaker 4: working for a big company a JF. White that built
Speaker 4: part of Logan Airport. He ran a bulldozer. He did
Speaker 4: the Masspike extension into Boston. But then in the early
Speaker 4: sixties and Andy, no answers are short with me, so
Speaker 4: just tell me to shut up.
Speaker 2: You Yeah, you've heard enough. The beauty of this format
Speaker 2: is you can just talk and we and it's great.
Speaker 2: It's just a conversation.
Speaker 4: But my dad, I had a little bit of a
Speaker 4: reputation as a bulldozer operator and I grew up in Framingham, Massachusetts,
Speaker 4: and oddly enough, there was a guy in Framingham, Massachusetts,
Speaker 4: who built, who was in a construction company that built
Speaker 4: golf courses and playing fields, so he needed a guy
Speaker 4: to shape greens and teas and bunkers in the early sixties.
Speaker 4: And he said to my dad, Hey, why don't you
Speaker 4: come try working with us for a week and we
Speaker 4: can see how it goes. And after a week, Bob
Speaker 4: Drake said to my father, you are the only guy
Speaker 4: who's going to do stuff for me. By that time,
Speaker 4: my dad and another guy from Framingham had started a
Speaker 4: small construction company, just two guys. They had a couple
Speaker 4: bulldozed as a couple back hoes, and for the spring, summer,
Speaker 4: and fall, for the next eighteen or twenty years, that's
Speaker 4: what my dad did. He worked. He did shaping for
Speaker 4: this guy named Bob Drake, some new courses, but mostly renovation,
Speaker 4: do existing courses. And that's what I wanted to do.
Speaker 4: But you know, my dad, he worked on the machine
Speaker 4: six days a week and then on Sunday he was
Speaker 4: his own mechanic. He'd do repairs and maintenance. And he
Speaker 4: didn't want me doing that. So ever since I found out,
Speaker 4: I wouldn't make it in the National Hockey League, which
Speaker 4: I found out when I was thirteen, and I went
Speaker 4: to a summer hockey school with kids all from all
Speaker 4: over Canada in the United States, and it took me
Speaker 4: about ten minutes to realize I'd never make it in
Speaker 4: the NHL. I decided I wanted to be a golf
Speaker 4: course architect, and my dad worked on a lot of
Speaker 4: Jeffrey Cornish projects, who Jeff did a lot of work
Speaker 4: in New England. And when I was in high school,
Speaker 4: I met Mster Cornish and said, what should a kid
Speaker 4: do who wants to be a golf course architect? And
Speaker 4: Jeff said, well, you should go to turf school for
Speaker 4: two years and then you should get your bachelor's in
Speaker 4: landscape architecture, and you should work on golf courses during
Speaker 4: the summer. And that was in those heady days when
Speaker 4: I actually listened to what people told me. So that's
Speaker 4: what I did, and when I was at then I
Speaker 4: went to graduate school in plant so Sciences, and when
Speaker 4: I was there, I taught a professor left right at
Speaker 4: the last minute before a fall semester started, so I
Speaker 4: taught a couple courses each semester in turf. I liked
Speaker 4: that a lot. I went down to Lake City Community
Speaker 4: College where they used to have a two year program
Speaker 4: that trained superintendents. I taught there for three years, and
Speaker 4: I wanted to get back to New England. I worked
Speaker 4: for the USGA Green Section, you know, the agronomous staff,
Speaker 4: visiting golf courses, and then one day mister Cornish and
Speaker 4: I just happened to be visiting the same golf course
Speaker 4: on the same day. We were walking it and all
Speaker 4: the committee people were in carts, and when they went
Speaker 4: to get the carts and we were walking down a hole,
Speaker 4: Jeff turned to me and said, you know, I think
Speaker 4: it's time you got involved in golf course design. Why
Speaker 4: don't you come work with me and then I'll retire
Speaker 4: after a few years, and and you can just run
Speaker 4: with the ball and you know, like some wet behind
Speaker 4: the is kind of guy. And myself, well, Jeff, Jeff,
Speaker 4: let me think about it for a week. I mean
Speaker 4: the minute he said that, I knew what was happening.
Speaker 2: So a week later you played You played it cool, though,
Speaker 2: and you're like, oh, let me think about my actions.
Speaker 4: No, the only the only thing that was obvious is
Speaker 4: I immediately went my hands. But you know, I called
Speaker 4: him back and said, I want to do that, and
Speaker 4: he said, Okay, this is how we're going to do it.
Speaker 4: I want you to work for the United States Golf
Speaker 4: Association for five more years. You've only worked there for
Speaker 4: two years. And I just said, Jeff, I cannot do
Speaker 4: I cannot know that this is going to happen. Sort
Speaker 4: of my dream. I said, you're a wicked, awesome, nice gentleman.
Speaker 4: I said, could let me just finish this season and
Speaker 4: next winter I'll come on with you. And so in
Speaker 4: February of eighty three, I went on with Jeff. And
Speaker 4: so that's kind of the way I got my start.
Speaker 4: You know, if you're not Jack Nicholas or or someone
Speaker 4: like that, it's still very much like the European system
Speaker 4: of an apprentice occupation. And if you know what I mean,
Speaker 4: the Brian Silvers of the world don't just put a
Speaker 4: shingle out and say hey, I'm a golf course architect
Speaker 4: and then get jobs. And it's appropriate that they should
Speaker 4: learn and train under somebody who's really well experienced. So
Speaker 4: I was lucky, you know, when things were moving and
Speaker 4: grooving in the eighties and the nineties and the early
Speaker 4: two thousands. I would say that Jeff and I got
Speaker 4: at least one hundred resumes a year from kids in
Speaker 4: turf school, from kids from landscape architecture school, from fifty
Speaker 4: year old guys who wanted to get out of the
Speaker 4: financial business who wanted to become golf architects and wanted
Speaker 4: to know how to do that. And out of all
Speaker 4: those people, not many get a chance. And I was
Speaker 4: just unbelievably fortunate to get a chance, because in all honesty,
Speaker 4: I still get things where they send me, you know,
Speaker 4: full sized plans of these imaginary golf courses. They do
Speaker 4: grading plans, and I just say to myself, Wow, my
Speaker 4: stuff isn't half as good as this, And you know
Speaker 4: they tried to get in. So I was just real lucky.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean a lot of times it's an opportunity
Speaker 2: and you know, hard work and are set and he
Speaker 2: got a kind of the good start there. I mean it,
Speaker 2: it's interesting I look at the landscape of the architecture world,
Speaker 2: and especially with you know, the economic slowdown. Now you
Speaker 2: have this marketplace where there aren't enough jobs for how
Speaker 2: many talented like associates that work for guys like Core
Speaker 2: and Crenshaw and Dope. And you know, if you look
Speaker 2: back to the eighties and nineties, those guys would be,
Speaker 2: you know, have their own architecture firms.
Speaker 4: Now, do you think I We had a couple of
Speaker 4: young guys who work for us in the office and
Speaker 4: one of them named Brian Johnson. His father was a
Speaker 4: golf pro. So Brian's been doodling golf hole since he
Speaker 4: was about six. He had to get out of it
Speaker 4: because there was no work. He's got a management company
Speaker 4: now in Houston, Texas, and he manages a golf course.
Speaker 4: For a guy, I'm going to tell you something, if
Speaker 4: he ever got a chance, he would blow everyone in
Speaker 4: the industry away. He does my drafting now, So I
Speaker 4: still get he's unbelievably talented and imaginative. I still get
Speaker 4: the benefit of his imagination. But it's really sad that
Speaker 4: a kid like Brian who wants it as much as
Speaker 4: anyone I've ever known, and who is more talented than
Speaker 4: anyone I've ever known, the multiple roots he thinks about it, Oh,
Speaker 4: Chie's and the strategy and the angles is just incredible.
Speaker 4: It's too bad it is, And it's no fault. It's
Speaker 4: through no fault to theirs. You know, this is the truth.
Speaker 4: I got to do some work, not insignificantly, just by
Speaker 4: lucky timing. Yeah, you know, nobody likes to say stuff
Speaker 4: like that, but that's the truth. You know. Being born
Speaker 4: when I was and getting into the work when I was,
Speaker 4: there were ups and downs, you know, but nothing like
Speaker 4: it is now in terms of new courses. I really
Speaker 4: lived through a twenty five year boom. And that's why,
Speaker 4: you know, when I see guys now and they bemoan
Speaker 4: how quiet it is. I don't want to say the
Speaker 4: wrong thing, but there are times when I'll say, well,
Speaker 4: don't you think when we were all building three hundred
Speaker 4: brand new courses a year that that was maybe as
Speaker 4: ridiculous on one side of the equation as just building
Speaker 4: five new courses a year. But you know what happens, dandy.
Speaker 4: You know, when you're in the heat of the battle
Speaker 4: and that many courses are getting built and it goes
Speaker 4: on for a couple decades or more, it's easy to think, well,
Speaker 4: this is the way it is, and you know it
Speaker 4: in one way it was the way it is. In
Speaker 4: another way, it definitely was not the way it is.
Speaker 4: And so if you live through that and you're complaining. Now,
Speaker 4: I just don't know that you're taking a very realistic viewpoint.
Speaker 4: But like Brian Johnson, I feel bad for these talented
Speaker 4: guys and gals who just can't get their chance. It
Speaker 4: further proves to me how fortunate a knucklehead like myself,
Speaker 4: how how fortunate I was.
Speaker 2: I don't know, it's it's like that old I think
Speaker 2: it was the player saying, you know, the more you work,
Speaker 2: the luckier you get, and sounds like you put in
Speaker 2: a lot of hard work.
Speaker 4: So oh no, no, no, I did. But but you
Speaker 4: know what Andy and I did. I worked. I believe
Speaker 4: I worked as hard as anyone. When I used to
Speaker 4: go to the Architects Society meetings and I talked, you know,
Speaker 4: after dinner with guys, what are you doing? Then there's
Speaker 4: this They would just the volume of work would would
Speaker 4: stun them a little bit. But you still can't. And
Speaker 4: my wife says the same thing, Oh.
Speaker 5: Any you actually had you you left on money and
Speaker 5: you didn't come back till Saturday, all while Ananda was
Speaker 5: growing up. You worked hard, And I said, yeah, but
Speaker 5: you cannot get away from the fact that I had
Speaker 5: the chance most you know, it's a small profession. A
Speaker 5: lot of people never had a chance. So I realize
Speaker 5: how fortunate I was. I when it's busy, you can
Speaker 5: sometimes forget that, you can forget how full today I
Speaker 5: got it going on. But again I think seeing Brian
Speaker 5: Johnson such a great he's a great kid, really good player.
Speaker 5: And I had him up and we played golf for
Speaker 5: a few days in May. And I got up one
Speaker 5: morning and on my desk was a couple of eight
Speaker 5: and a half by eleven sheets of papers of golf
Speaker 5: holes he designed over the night while he couldn't sleep.
Speaker 5: And when and I got up, I saw him and
Speaker 5: he was already up, and he says, Brian, I really
Speaker 5: want to I really want to.
Speaker 4: Get back in this. And I said, I know you do, Bry,
Speaker 4: but but I said, you know, you have a really
Speaker 4: good job right now. It's probably paying you more than
Speaker 4: you could do if you could just scratch out a
Speaker 4: job in somebody's office. And I know, you know, he
Speaker 4: wants me to get busy enough to have to need
Speaker 4: full time help, and I'm not sure that will ever
Speaker 4: happen again. Yeah, being home during the recession, uh, you know,
Speaker 4: being home more than two nights a week was a
Speaker 4: real eye opening experience for me. I enjoyed it more
Speaker 4: than I could have ever imagined.
Speaker 2: Mhm. So you know you've started, You've done a lot
Speaker 2: of restorations too, and I'd love to talk a little
Speaker 2: bit about kind of the golden h architects that you've
Speaker 2: encountered and kind of learned from, and who you consider
Speaker 2: your biggest influences and why.
Speaker 4: Well I I I got to go modern first, Andy,
Speaker 4: because early on in my life, when I was teaching
Speaker 4: at Lake City and see, during the summer when there
Speaker 4: were no classes, my job was to drive around the
Speaker 4: Southeast and visit courses where my students were working on
Speaker 4: their summer on the job training thing. And I started
Speaker 4: to you know, Harbor Town and Well and even Seminole,
Speaker 4: which Pete didn't design, but he was a member of.
Speaker 4: I started to think that his courses were a little
Speaker 4: bit different than other people's courses. And it wasn't just
Speaker 4: it was it was decidedly not the railroad ties or
Speaker 4: pot bunkers or strip bunkers. There was something going on there,
Speaker 4: and and that kind of planted a little thing in
Speaker 4: my mind. I wish I had been bright enough to
Speaker 4: fully understand it, and Then when I became a USJA
Speaker 4: agronomist up in the Northeast, I saw lots of golf courses,
Speaker 4: but I started to really like these McDonald and Rayner
Speaker 4: golf courses. There was something going on there. I wasn't
Speaker 4: quite sure what it was, but I knew they were
Speaker 4: different and they were fun to play, but they were
Speaker 4: still challenging. But I still was so stupid, I couldn't
Speaker 4: really boil it down to its fundamentals. And I'm going
Speaker 4: to tell you a story I never tell in public.
Speaker 4: But we used to close the office the first week
Speaker 4: in December, back when we had an office, and we'd
Speaker 4: go out to Lakenta, California. I had friends who worked
Speaker 4: for Landmark, and we would play like Ryder Cup matches
Speaker 4: against them for a week. There had be four of
Speaker 4: us against four of them, and we would play Lakinita Mountain,
Speaker 4: Lakita Citrus, we'd play PGA West, we'd play the old
Speaker 4: Dinah Shore, we'd play the New Dinah Shore. So it
Speaker 4: was a Pete Dye extravaganza. And again I felt there
Speaker 4: was something about his courses. And this is the truth,
Speaker 4: and I'm a little embarrassed about this. One night after dinner,
Speaker 4: I walked over to Lakinta Hotel. And this was in December,
Speaker 4: about two weeks after they'd had the Skins game at
Speaker 4: PGA West. Yea and I sat next to the fireplace,
Speaker 4: and in a little wicker basket next to the fireplace
Speaker 4: there were the program books that they sold during the
Speaker 4: Skins game. Yeah, and I are you taping me? Andy?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 4: Yeah, okay, all right, then I won't use great expletives.
Speaker 4: In this wicker basket was a program and I opened
Speaker 4: it up and the centerfold. You know, only a guy
Speaker 4: interested in design can go nuts about a centerfold, which
Speaker 4: is an aerial photograph of PGA West, you know, and
Speaker 4: when you look down on it from the sky, immediately
Speaker 4: I said, oh, holy crap, it's all about angles. I
Speaker 4: could see the angles that Pete had put in, how
Speaker 4: a green might point down a point at the hook
Speaker 4: side of the fairway, and how there was one of
Speaker 4: his bite off strip bunkers that went down the right side.
Speaker 4: And the more you bid off, the more you align
Speaker 4: with the green. And I said, honest to God, I said, oh,
Speaker 4: you stupid, sob you were on the edge of this,
Speaker 4: but it didn't with the different old points didn't all
Speaker 4: go together to make you realize it. And that day
Speaker 4: what I thought about golf course design completely changed. So
Speaker 4: it was really Pete's angles hit me. I didn't fully
Speaker 4: form it in my mind or verbalize it. And then
Speaker 4: Rayner McDonald I saw more of that. And then when
Speaker 4: I saw this picture, it completely changed the way I thought.
Speaker 4: I knew my carter's for play had to be much wider.
Speaker 4: I knew we had to cut down trees to give
Speaker 4: people the width that allows alternate routes. It was really
Speaker 4: it was a interesting for me awaken For if you
Speaker 4: said to me, Brian, what would you do different in
Speaker 4: your life? I would say to you, well, I would
Speaker 4: have gone to see all the golf courses I did
Speaker 4: when I was working at the college, when I was
Speaker 4: grown up, going to my dad's jobs, when I was
Speaker 4: a USG green section agronomous. But I would have gone
Speaker 4: and visited even more, and I would have stopped looking
Speaker 4: at the turf. I would have looked at what I
Speaker 4: call the skeleton, the tops of the t's, the top
Speaker 4: of the fairway and the top of the green, and
Speaker 4: I would look at what angles are presented by that,
Speaker 4: because I think that that is ninety nine point nine
Speaker 4: percent of what allows a golf course to be strategic,
Speaker 4: but also what allows a golf course to be played
Speaker 4: by the average and less than average player, but what
Speaker 4: allows a golf course to still be mentally stimulating for
Speaker 4: an excellent player. To me, it's all its angles and
Speaker 4: almost nothing else. And so this age of the Internet,
Speaker 4: Google Earth is my favorite site because when I get called, hey,
Speaker 4: this is so and so from such and such country club,
Speaker 4: I'm on Google Earth doing my homework before I get
Speaker 4: out there. And and the funny thing is, you know,
Speaker 4: they'll they'll say to me when I'm walking, of course,
Speaker 4: so what do you think of the conditions? And I say, look,
Speaker 4: I'll tell you what I think of the conditions, because
Speaker 4: I kind of you know, I have a turf degree,
Speaker 4: I have a master's training and plant and soil sciences.
Speaker 4: I was a USDA agrantoist. But I said, I'm really
Speaker 4: not here to tell you about your turf. I'm interested in, if,
Speaker 4: if you'll forgive me, I think you should be interested
Speaker 4: in the design character of your golf course. Does it
Speaker 4: present angles, does it present alternate routes of play? And
Speaker 4: so on and so forth. So those are my those
Speaker 4: are my influences? In a long answer, Andy.
Speaker 2: Uh so, I'm curious. I'm all about angles and strategy
Speaker 2: and and I don't think it's really possible to have
Speaker 2: those without wid Do you agree with that? You?
Speaker 4: No, I couldn't agree more. And being that I'm an
Speaker 4: old card I'm going to tell you secrets I don't
Speaker 4: normally tell. I used to. I used to teach a
Speaker 4: two day seminar, first with Bob Lowman and then Jan
Speaker 4: Bell Jan for the Golf Course Superintendent's Association. And it
Speaker 4: was on golf course renovation, restoration and construction. And one
Speaker 4: day during the seminary, a kid said to me, how
Speaker 4: why do you clear your corridors when you're building a
Speaker 4: new course through the woods? And I, you know, I
Speaker 4: I was honest. I said between one hundred and eighty
Speaker 4: and two hundred feet. And at lunch Jan said to me,
Speaker 4: did you misunderstand that question? And I said no? And
Speaker 4: she said, well, Brian, how do you do all the
Speaker 4: things you want to do on a golf hole in
Speaker 4: such ant carder? This was before the light bulb went
Speaker 4: on with the aerial photograph of PGA West of all places.
Speaker 4: You know what I mean, you know, most people would
Speaker 4: think of PGA West and some of the pot bunkers
Speaker 4: and railroad ties and think it's not a sound course.
Speaker 4: But you see, that's the trouble today. They're looking at
Speaker 4: the superficial aspects of a golf course. They're not looking
Speaker 4: at the skeleton. Don't tell me about the skin, which
Speaker 4: is the turf, and don't tell me that much about
Speaker 4: the muscles and tendons, which are some of the railroad ties.
Speaker 4: What angles does it present? So Jan said that, and
Speaker 4: that kind of had an effect on me. And then
Speaker 4: there used to be a trade magazine. Jeez, I can't
Speaker 4: remember the name of it now that we're talking about it,
Speaker 4: but a law had been passed in Hawaii that said
Speaker 4: you could only clear cards for golf holes like I
Speaker 4: can't remember the number two hundred twenty your whatever feet wide.
Speaker 4: And there was a comment from Nicholas that says, well,
Speaker 4: I don't see how we can build golf courses anymore,
Speaker 4: and his gosh, I credit Jack with something that's very
Speaker 4: out of character. But Jan, because I really admired gence,
Speaker 4: she was really a good friend of mine. And then
Speaker 4: I saw this aerial photograph and I said, I can't
Speaker 4: do what I want to do. It's like the tire
Speaker 4: commercial wider is better, I can't do. And that's what
Speaker 4: people used to say with the courses of mine. From
Speaker 4: a little bit later time in my career. A guy
Speaker 4: would play at friends of mine. They'd say, gee, you
Speaker 4: could hit fit three of your original golf holes in
Speaker 4: this golf hall. And I said, I wasn't doing it right.
Speaker 4: It's got to be wider to allow the strategy and
Speaker 4: the different angles. And you know, I used to do
Speaker 4: lateral fairway bunkers like everybody in the sixties and a
Speaker 4: lot of people still today. Now I turned most of
Speaker 4: my fairway bunkers perpendicular shot, so they bite into the fairway.
Speaker 4: Now I like the fairway to swing out to the
Speaker 4: side the opposite side, so it's still the same with
Speaker 4: pretty much going all the way down. But you know,
Speaker 4: it's like I remember I saw Shinnecock when I worked
Speaker 4: for the USGA, and there was something going on there.
Speaker 4: I wasn't sure what it was. And when I read
Speaker 4: articles about Shinnacock, it was, well, Shinnacock's a great course
Speaker 4: because the fescue is blowing into the breeze and blah,
Speaker 4: blah blah blah. That isn't it. It was because of
Speaker 4: its sinewy fairways that moved to the right and then
Speaker 4: back to the left. It's set up on the same
Speaker 4: golf hole. It's set up fade drive zones, it set
Speaker 4: up straight drive zones, it set up hook drive zones.
Speaker 4: And when you it's the same as the s turns
Speaker 4: that Pete puts into his fairways. So those things all
Speaker 4: other people are able to coalesced these inputs quicker than
Speaker 4: I did. But once I did, I knew it was
Speaker 4: wider and that I really wanted to try to get
Speaker 4: some of those turns into the fairways because they so
Speaker 4: impacted strategy.
Speaker 2: Well, I also imagine starting your career during that time,
Speaker 2: it was common practice for penal and tight. You know,
Speaker 2: hard golf was great golf, and it people wanted to
Speaker 2: go out and struggle on the golf course. And that's
Speaker 2: what you know the developers wanted were hard golf courses
Speaker 2: as opposed to fun, playable and courses that really infuse thought.
Speaker 4: Yeah, your kind and the honest god to suggest that,
Speaker 4: I just think there's a million reasons for someone to
Speaker 4: say why they weren't designing more strategic and thought provoking
Speaker 4: golf courses. And I think the only good one is
Speaker 4: they hadn't evolved at that point in their thinking, or
Speaker 4: they just didn't think that way. I think that, you know,
Speaker 4: there was thought, but Pete was still Pete was building
Speaker 4: hired golf courses with tremendously sinewy fairways that were very
Speaker 4: strategic that I could go to and play the sixty
Speaker 4: three hundred yard marker and play to my handicap while
Speaker 4: the pros from the back markers were having trouble. So
Speaker 4: if you'll forgive me for saying, and I'm I am
Speaker 4: a piece of evidence number one that it's just it's
Speaker 4: a little bit of a helpful excuse, you know. I
Speaker 4: think that I think that people could have sold their
Speaker 4: developer on Look, we're going to make a great golf course.
Speaker 2: Here.
Speaker 4: Here's the eighth hole from Shinnecock that everyone raves about.
Speaker 4: Here's the sixteenth hole at Chhinnacock that everyone raves about.
Speaker 4: And I've taken out the hay down the sides so
Speaker 4: you're not distracted by that. The reason this is a
Speaker 4: great hole, well, the reasons this is a great hole
Speaker 4: is the green points in a particular direction. The fairway
Speaker 4: has lots of movement. If you want to set up
Speaker 4: a shot a drive, so your approach shot works with
Speaker 4: the angle of the green. You either need to drop
Speaker 4: it short of that hook bunker, put it as close
Speaker 4: to the right of the hook bunker as you can,
Speaker 4: or hit a draw around that hook bunker and that
Speaker 4: sets up the angle. And that's what makes it a
Speaker 4: great golf course. And that's what I want to do
Speaker 4: on your golf course. So you need to give me
Speaker 4: a little more within the corridors between the houses going
Speaker 4: down both sides, and that we could achieve that kind
Speaker 4: of thing. So I think I think even today, you know,
Speaker 4: there are visible people out there who were putting these
Speaker 4: characteristics into their golf courses.
Speaker 2: But I.
Speaker 4: Think they could have put them in even in courses
Speaker 4: in the eighties and nineties. They could have convinced their
Speaker 4: owners that this can still be an interesting difficult because
Speaker 4: I mean, look at PGA West, It's got sinewy fairways
Speaker 4: and angles seven days a week. The pros played it.
Speaker 4: The first year was open as a Bob Hope as
Speaker 4: a courser in the Bob Hope Tournament, and then they
Speaker 4: wrote a they all put a petition. They never wanted
Speaker 4: to play it again, and they've never played it again,
Speaker 4: although I think they played it this past year. Yeah,
Speaker 4: part of the Bob Hope. Well now they played it
Speaker 4: and they shoot sixty threes because they figured it out.
Speaker 4: See that's the interesting thing the PGA West of the world.
Speaker 4: Just forget the deep bunkers and the realities and all
Speaker 4: that external stuff. You have to think when you play.
Speaker 4: And that's what those holes that Hinnacock did. They did
Speaker 4: what Ben Hogan used to say, on the best golf holes,
Speaker 4: you have to think one shot ahead. And the trouble
Speaker 4: is all golfers have played ninety percent of their rounds
Speaker 4: of golf on courses that don't require that thought, so
Speaker 4: they can often reject a course where you actually have
Speaker 4: to think a little bit and kind of like tack
Speaker 4: your way from waypoint to waypoint. In the winter, I
Speaker 4: play a lot of golf and I'll say, look at
Speaker 4: how this hole is set up. You should set up
Speaker 4: on the right side of the tee. You always hit
Speaker 4: fade that allow you to end up in the fair way.
Speaker 4: It would be better if you were on the left hand.
Speaker 4: And I've had my friends turn to me and say, well,
Speaker 4: I don't want to think when I play, And I say, yeah,
Speaker 4: but wait a minute. It's five seconds a shot. You
Speaker 4: shoot a hundred, it's five hundred seconds. You need to
Speaker 4: think for eight minutes. You can do that. I know
Speaker 4: you can.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a It requires a few, like brief seconds
Speaker 2: of intense thought every couple of minutes.
Speaker 4: No, and and people reject that. And you see it
Speaker 4: in the poor average players who are hit and hook
Speaker 4: every single shot, hit and fade every single shot, and
Speaker 4: they tee it up in the middle of the tea
Speaker 4: and they aim right down the middle. It's just if
Speaker 4: they gave it a little more thought, you know, that
Speaker 4: kind of course management when I sometimes think when someone
Speaker 4: takes a lesson, you know, they should do it half
Speaker 4: an hour on what are you having a problem with
Speaker 4: your grip, let's work on your grip and we'll try
Speaker 4: to improve that. And then the next half hour they
Speaker 4: should it down and say, look at the golf hole
Speaker 4: on the computer screen, where do you want to try
Speaker 4: to hit it? And you know they'll say, well, I'm
Speaker 4: not sure I want to hit it down the middle.
Speaker 4: And then the pro would say, well, yeah, but look
Speaker 4: at how that green, it's kind of what we call
Speaker 4: a fade green. It it moves to the right from
Speaker 4: front to back. You if you if you play a
Speaker 4: fade you can fail positively. If it doesn't fade, you'll
Speaker 4: have a longer put. But if it does fade, you're
Speaker 4: closer to the pin. And by playing fade, because it's
Speaker 4: a fade green, you'll take those nasty bunkers that play
Speaker 4: a role in making it a fade green, you'll take
Speaker 4: them completely out of play. So if folks could read
Speaker 4: holes a little bit better, but again I don't, I'm
Speaker 4: not giving them a hard time because the majority around
Speaker 4: in their life, they haven't had a hole that was
Speaker 4: set up so it could be read and played strategic.
Speaker 2: And also that education, it's it's hard to learn about
Speaker 2: that stuff. It's you know, I think it almost takes
Speaker 2: an awakening and you hit on it a little bit
Speaker 2: about not having a hole. But I see so many
Speaker 2: of my friends. They they when they finally play a
Speaker 2: great golf course, they that has the width and the
Speaker 2: angles and the strategy, they finally realize that, wait, golf
Speaker 2: can be different and there is like this better golf
Speaker 2: that exists.
Speaker 4: Ye, And when we make a change on an existing course.
Speaker 4: I generally find that a good percentage of the players
Speaker 4: find out something's going on by mistake. They hit it
Speaker 4: down the left side, by mistake, they pull it, and
Speaker 4: when they get there they see the green is completely
Speaker 4: open to the next shot, and they start to connect
Speaker 4: the dots, and then they start to look for that
Speaker 4: more on the next hole and the next hole after that,
Speaker 4: and the next hole after that. And the way that
Speaker 4: it manifests itself sometimes is they'll say, oh, that was fun,
Speaker 4: and I'll say, what do you mean by fun? I said,
Speaker 4: do you mean easy? And they said, oh, no, how
Speaker 4: could it be easy? You not go ahead? You put
Speaker 4: one hundred and thirty bunkers out here. It's not easy.
Speaker 4: But if we look at it, we see the route
Speaker 4: we should go. And a lot of times it happens
Speaker 4: when I play golf with them. I don't hit it
Speaker 4: very long, but I don't miss many fairways, and I
Speaker 4: can go down on one side or the other, and
Speaker 4: they say, oh god, you can't hit it out of
Speaker 4: your shadow. But I see how you look at the
Speaker 4: holes and how you play them. I'm going to try that,
Speaker 4: so you know. Unfortunately, I think most times people might
Speaker 4: get to a shin a cock and it goes right
Speaker 4: over their heads because they're looking at the hay and
Speaker 4: the distant views and stuff like that. But there's stuff
Speaker 4: out there. And then you know the other thing, Andy,
Speaker 4: and and you know this, many of the courses in
Speaker 4: the top one hundred don't have a shot value in them.
Speaker 4: They're just in the top one hundred.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, I mean the top one hundred rankings are
Speaker 2: flawed in the sense that it's not really about the
Speaker 2: golf course. It's more about the experience, the aesthetics and
Speaker 2: the Yeah, it's the window dressing. Really is that beyond
Speaker 2: the experience.
Speaker 4: The conditioning, it's it's it's all that stuff. And really
Speaker 4: the contest should not be called best New Golf Courses
Speaker 4: that that is the wrong name. They should be called
Speaker 4: the golf course that was lucky enough to be sighted
Speaker 4: on the most ridiculously foolish natural golf terrain ever conceived
Speaker 4: by the Lord above.
Speaker 2: Or had enough money to make that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's interesting. You know, they're the only contests that
Speaker 4: compare a you Goo versus against a Ferrari. Yeah, it's so,
Speaker 4: but you I couldn't have said it better. You said
Speaker 4: it it's all the externals. It's oh god, they came
Speaker 4: out with cold towels for us to wipe our face
Speaker 4: and put on our neck at the turn. And I mean,
Speaker 4: look at most of the evaluation sheets the raiders fill out.
Speaker 4: I think on one shot values is twenty percent.
Speaker 2: What the hell?
Speaker 4: What else is there?
Speaker 2: Well, that's like there's no playability, there's no there. I
Speaker 2: think it's I wrote a whole article about why, you know,
Speaker 2: people shouldn't even pay attention to Golf Digest top one
Speaker 2: hundred lists, and it just you know, the the rankings
Speaker 2: would be fine if if it was called the top
Speaker 2: one hundred golf experiences, but they call it the one
Speaker 2: hundred greatest golf courses, and it's it's so it's it's misconstrued.
Speaker 2: I've played a lot of these, a lot of courses
Speaker 2: that are ranked above other courses that I know are
Speaker 2: a lot better. And and but then when you read
Speaker 2: the criteria and you and you start to look at
Speaker 2: and understand the criteria, you understand why certain courses are
Speaker 2: ranked in certain spots, and it's because, oh they have
Speaker 2: a giant maintenance budget, or they have.
Speaker 4: Comfort and history there. You know, that kind of thing.
Speaker 4: I had a chance once to speak to a group
Speaker 4: of raiders and and so I gave my history of
Speaker 4: golf course design, and two funny things happened afterwards. One
Speaker 4: was a guy got up and said, you kept using
Speaker 4: this this was a raider. You kept using this term
Speaker 4: and I've never heard it before. What's a radan?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 4: And then the coordinator of this of the panelists said
Speaker 4: to me afterwards, he said, Wow, that was awesome. You
Speaker 4: should write a book. And I have to give thee
Speaker 4: some of the guys credit and gals because afterwards at
Speaker 4: the cocktail how they said, could you give us a
Speaker 4: copy of your PowerPoint? And I said, you know, I
Speaker 4: really as much as I wanted them to know something
Speaker 4: about design so that they for what they did. It
Speaker 4: was just fascinating that those were to comment. And so
Speaker 4: the next day I attended a seminar where one of
Speaker 4: the they had various raiders get up and say, well,
Speaker 4: how do you actually do your ratings? And this guy
Speaker 4: got up and said, Tom, I'm a three handicap, and
Speaker 4: when I rate a course, I bring my son, he's
Speaker 4: a plus two, and he brings his wife, she's an eight.
Speaker 4: So that way we get three distinctly different calibers of
Speaker 4: golfers evaluating the course.
Speaker 2: Kind of the same bucket.
Speaker 4: You can't you can't make you can't make that stuff up.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's pretty awesome. So i'd love to talk a
Speaker 2: little bit about more about Rainer and McDonald. I'm a
Speaker 2: huge Rainer fan and we've got a lot of Rainer
Speaker 2: fans that listen, and I would love to hear a
Speaker 2: little bit about what your favorite template hole is of
Speaker 2: all the template holes.
Speaker 4: Uh, Andy, I I don't think I can. I don't.
Speaker 4: I don't you mean, uh, this hole on this specific course, No,
Speaker 4: just in.
Speaker 2: General of like, you know what what overarching strategic you know, uh,
Speaker 2: strategic hole template hole like from a strategy standpoint, or
Speaker 2: just the way it sets up, the way it makes
Speaker 2: you think is your favorite?
Speaker 4: Wow, that's really really hard, you know. I would say
Speaker 4: the the Radan, the Radan at the National, but I
Speaker 4: just go out of my mind about the Alps at
Speaker 4: the National. I'm really hard pressed. I think what I
Speaker 4: really love, Andy, is I love to see the different
Speaker 4: versions of the templates. And I think this is really important,
Speaker 4: and this is something that's often missed, is that it's
Speaker 4: the template holes are not like every rat Dan is
Speaker 4: not exactly the same. Maybe more obvious to some people,
Speaker 4: every Beirits is not the same. You know, every bes
Speaker 4: Beirits is not the full three level Beirits. But I
Speaker 4: think what they did so great was they had their
Speaker 4: template holes, and they adapted and adopted them to various
Speaker 4: pieces of land. Their goal was not to make each
Speaker 4: version of the template exactly the same as every other version.
Speaker 4: For example, if you play the seventeenth hole at Point
Speaker 4: of Vidra at the Players Club, it's got a certain
Speaker 4: look to it, so on and so forth. Well then
Speaker 4: you play the seventeenth hole at PGA West, It's got
Speaker 4: almost the exact same look to it. Where each radan
Speaker 4: is different, each punch bowl is different. You know, when
Speaker 4: I'm driving up the driveway, I wonder if they have
Speaker 4: a punch bowl, and I wonder if it's a natural
Speaker 4: punch bowl where the land was like that, like many
Speaker 4: of them are, or is it more a contrived or
Speaker 4: constructed punch bowl, which some of them are. So I
Speaker 4: think I'm not really answering your question. What my favorite
Speaker 4: thing about the templates is is to see how they
Speaker 4: are different from course to course. I think that that
Speaker 4: is really really fascinating. Look. A great one is Alps.
Speaker 4: Look at Alps at the National there is a huge
Speaker 4: bunker where you bite off as much as you dare
Speaker 4: and then your second shot is blind up to the
Speaker 4: top of that hill. Well, that bears no relationship other
Speaker 4: than strategically, which is of course mildly important to nuts
Speaker 4: like you and me. To the Alps at your acres
Speaker 4: or Fox Chapel where there is that bite off bunker
Speaker 4: on one side or the other. But at both of
Speaker 4: those courses there are mounds where if you bite off
Speaker 4: a lot of the bunker you have a view of
Speaker 4: the green. If you bail out, there are mounds in
Speaker 4: the front and side of the green that block the
Speaker 4: view of the green. So there are two completely different
Speaker 4: versions of the template. Yes, and it's like each one
Speaker 4: of them is very cool.
Speaker 2: It's like Fisher's if you hit it, if you take
Speaker 2: on the water down the right side, you get a
Speaker 2: small sliver of a view of the green.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's very very cool. So I think that's one thing,
Speaker 4: and you know it, as you said, it's a real
Speaker 4: external thing. When when somebody writes an article and God
Speaker 4: bless them the night that Yale was always pictured as
Speaker 4: one of the templates. Yeah, or some other really really
Speaker 4: famous and maybe more outlandish version of a template is
Speaker 4: what is pictured. But again, are there are Alps? I
Speaker 4: remember one time we were talking about an Alps and
Speaker 4: the guy said, you explained to me what the Alps is.
Speaker 4: And he said to me afterwards, a friend of mine,
Speaker 4: you have no idea what an Alps is. And I says,
Speaker 4: what do you mean? He says, well, what you described
Speaker 4: is no relationship to the Alps at the National and
Speaker 4: I said, well, forgive me, but the Alps at the
Speaker 4: National has no match in other Alps by Rayner and McDonald,
Speaker 4: I think what you're missing is the lay of the
Speaker 4: land can be. It's not the lay of the land
Speaker 4: that really made it, it was how they set it
Speaker 4: up strategically. So for me, I think that is the
Speaker 4: coolest thing about Rayner and McDonald is the presentation of
Speaker 4: each template is different from course to course, and that's
Speaker 4: what makes it so much fun. When you're driving up
Speaker 4: the driveway, you're saying, I wonder if it's going to
Speaker 4: be like the National where I can actually kick a
Speaker 4: low shot off that right front corner of the radan
Speaker 4: and have it go kind of diagonally to that tuck
Speaker 4: left pin. Well, not all of them work that great
Speaker 4: in that regard. The Redan at Fishers doesn't work quite
Speaker 4: like that. The Redan at Yeaman's Hall, it isn't quite
Speaker 4: like that. But that's what makes them interesting, because it's
Speaker 4: just not one golf course repeated seventy five times mm.
Speaker 4: Each one has its own interests. I think that is
Speaker 4: the nature of their brilliance. And the other thing was
Speaker 4: it doesn't appear that what they were doing struck them
Speaker 4: as outlandish. They just thought they were building a good
Speaker 4: golf course. Whereas today, if I do a lot of
Speaker 4: punch bowl greens, people say, well, what the hell is that?
Speaker 4: Or a radan I couldn't hold my ball on the green?
Speaker 4: Why does it pitch away from the shot? See, today
Speaker 4: it appears outlandish. They just they just were going about
Speaker 4: their business building cool golf courses that were you know
Speaker 4: that we're based on When you go back and you read,
Speaker 4: you know, I'm just thrilled if people are able to
Speaker 4: recognize a template, if they would ever go back and
Speaker 4: read Scotland's Gift and and see how McDonald came up
Speaker 4: to selecting the templates. It's just it couldn't be more fascinating.
Speaker 2: You know. One of my, uh, my favorite things about
Speaker 2: the template holes is exactly what you said, is like,
Speaker 2: I remember this winter I played Mountain Lake and driving
Speaker 2: in you see the burits and you're like, oh wow,
Speaker 2: and and you I think that's one of the things
Speaker 2: people why people love watching the Masters year and year
Speaker 2: out is that they know what's coming.
Speaker 4: It's familiar to them, no doubt.
Speaker 2: And an understanding of templates. And and I love like,
Speaker 2: you know, when you play a Rainer course, you're you're
Speaker 2: waiting to see what's around the next corner, and you know,
Speaker 2: you see these different versions of it, like like Mountain
Speaker 2: Lake's road hole is completely different than say Shore Acres
Speaker 2: road hole or National's road hole, and it's it is unique.
Speaker 2: And I think that's where it's so misunderstood is people
Speaker 2: think that it's just, you know, a replica course, but
Speaker 2: it's it's not a replica course in any way.
Speaker 4: No, it's it that's a real good connection. Andy. That's
Speaker 4: that's what they think it is. And it's it's unquestioned. Uh,
Speaker 4: it isn't that. But you know, on the other hand,
Speaker 4: you could go to a contemporary course where an architect
Speaker 4: copies a hole and it's exactly like the other version.
Speaker 4: You know, it hasn't been an adaptation of it. And
Speaker 4: you know, I read an article once where one the
Speaker 4: more famous contemporary architects said, well, why would I want
Speaker 4: to repeat themes on a golf hole when there are
Speaker 4: so many new themes still to be designed or practiced,
Speaker 4: And you know, it was just such a ludicrous thing
Speaker 4: to say, especially if you investigated the body of work
Speaker 4: that you know he's talking about. Yeah, it's hard to
Speaker 4: charge two million. It's hard to charge a million or
Speaker 4: two million on a course when you tell the client
Speaker 4: I'm going to base this on the work of Rainer
Speaker 4: and McDonald's.
Speaker 2: So we got a lot of questions from readers and followers.
Speaker 2: I put out that you were coming on, and so
Speaker 2: I wanted to get to a few of those if sure.
Speaker 2: So here's a question. And so everyone seems to and
Speaker 2: this is from Michael Wolfe, everyone seems to now agree
Speaker 2: getting back to the GCA principles of nineteen hundred to
Speaker 2: nineteen thirties is best for golf and restorations are where
Speaker 2: the work is now. He wants to know what about
Speaker 2: the hundreds of golf courses, hundreds and thousands of golf
Speaker 2: courses built in the eighties and nineties, and what do
Speaker 2: you do with all them? Like, can these residential courses
Speaker 2: that were built with narrow fairways be retrofitted in any way?
Speaker 4: Or I think they can? And Andy, you know, we
Speaker 4: all have to be those of us who are betrothed
Speaker 4: to the nineteen hundreds to nineteen thirties. We have to
Speaker 4: admit not everyone that was built in was great. You know,
Speaker 4: there were a lot of eighteen steaks on a Sunday
Speaker 4: afternoon that were not tremendous golf courses. You know, we
Speaker 4: think of a place like Seminole that to me has
Speaker 4: the greatest alternating shot shapes of any ross course I've
Speaker 4: ever seen, spectacularly well done. I think, the greatest angles
Speaker 4: of any ross course I've ever seen. But you know,
Speaker 4: Donald and aw and all the rest of the gang,
Speaker 4: they didn't do all the courses built. But I think
Speaker 4: you can still do a good job even without a
Speaker 4: three hundred foot wide card, or you can still well,
Speaker 4: let me say, I've worked on those courses. I haven't
Speaker 4: seen one where you can't get some twist and turn
Speaker 4: in the fairways where you can't get the fairway bunkers
Speaker 4: to more significantly impact the twist and turn, where you
Speaker 4: can't think about angles on the greens. In all honesty,
Speaker 4: I think the narrowness of the car is I don't
Speaker 4: like it, but I think it's a little bit too
Speaker 4: comfortable an excuse to use for why a course couldn't
Speaker 4: be made more interesting to play and more fun to play.
Speaker 2: So how would you go about, you know, kind of
Speaker 2: working with narrow corridors now that you're kind of awakening.
Speaker 2: Say somebody said, hey, we want to bring you back
Speaker 2: to one of your courses in the early days where
Speaker 2: you built with narrow fairways.
Speaker 4: Well, I am I would still if I went back
Speaker 4: to one of my courses where my fairways are thirty
Speaker 4: yards wide, I would still put bunkers in that. There's
Speaker 4: always room in the original tree planting to let a
Speaker 4: bunker stick into the fairway, say on the hook side,
Speaker 4: and let it swing out more and narrow the amount
Speaker 4: of rough until you get to the trees, so you
Speaker 4: get that sinewy type. I guess, I guess that's one
Speaker 4: of the first things I think about. I was just
Speaker 4: doing it the other day on Google Earth, where someone
Speaker 4: had called me and I looked at their golf course,
Speaker 4: and I was already trying to think of how I
Speaker 4: could get more movement. Now, Andy, I don't mean movement
Speaker 4: like contour mowing, where the fairway is thirty five yards
Speaker 4: wide for the shortest hitter, twenty yards wide for the
Speaker 4: guy who hits a two twenty and then ten yards wide,
Speaker 4: that thing from the eighties and the early nineties. I
Speaker 4: mean a fairly consistent with the fairway that just twists
Speaker 4: and turns on its way to the green. So I
Speaker 4: think you can do it in narrow carridors and narrow fairways.
Speaker 4: And because usually when I did narrow fairways, I had
Speaker 4: a good amount of rough, and I would see some
Speaker 4: of that rough being converted to fairway.
Speaker 2: Yeah, widening out. I think that's a good strategy, is
Speaker 2: getting turning a lot of the rough into fairway and getting.
Speaker 4: A little week I said that I would not mention
Speaker 4: names of golf courses that I work on, because it's
Speaker 4: kind of the club's business, and I know that's what
Speaker 4: everybody likes to do. When I worked at so and so,
Speaker 4: and I worked and such and such, but we worked
Speaker 4: at a nineteen sixties designed golf course on Long Island
Speaker 4: last year, and I would say one of the main
Speaker 4: things we did was turn the angle of the bunkers
Speaker 4: and make the fairways bigger and there was room to
Speaker 4: do the twist and turn. And I would say that
Speaker 4: they range between pleasantly surprised to completely stunned how they
Speaker 4: have to think on their golf course now. It was
Speaker 4: just the typical sixties golf course, dead straight fairway edges
Speaker 4: and bunkers that were parallel to the center line and
Speaker 4: never impact play. So I think you can do it
Speaker 4: even in narrow card is. Obviously you can't do it
Speaker 4: as well, but you can still get that feel of
Speaker 4: the flow.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that it makes sense. It's so David Grady
Speaker 2: wants to know how kind of renovation and restoration has
Speaker 2: evolved over the past twenty years.
Speaker 4: Well for me, you know, it's hard for me to
Speaker 4: speak for everyone. You know, I've never been the mouthpiece
Speaker 4: for the craft, but I would say at the very
Speaker 4: least there appears to be more appreciation for as a
Speaker 4: first step trying to determine what that golf course was
Speaker 4: like originally and then seeing what of that you could
Speaker 4: emphasize in your work and what to me, if this
Speaker 4: is an older course, what vintage of character, what vintage
Speaker 4: characteristics you could put into the course and put them
Speaker 4: in in a manner that people think that they were
Speaker 4: always there if they weren't there originally. So I think
Speaker 4: there's a little bit more appreciation for what might have
Speaker 4: been there originally today. I think there's a little bit
Speaker 4: more appreciation for what was there originally and what may
Speaker 4: have been taken out. But you know, you still hear
Speaker 4: about this course or that course fill in the blank
Speaker 4: here designed by a golden age architect, that the club
Speaker 4: is not entirely appreciative of that, and who they hire
Speaker 4: is not totally appreciative of that, and they get a
Speaker 4: course in the fill in the architect's name mode. So
Speaker 4: I think folks like you and me, Andy, who like
Speaker 4: that stuff, think that it's everywhere and it's it's fire
Speaker 4: from everywhere.
Speaker 2: Yet, So, what what's the course that you'd like to
Speaker 2: see host a major championship that hasn't or isn't hosting
Speaker 2: major championships?
Speaker 4: Oh boy, I Andy, I I don't know off the
Speaker 4: top of my head. You know, I'm trying to kind
Speaker 4: of factor in. I'm kind of trying to factor in, uh,
Speaker 4: the way they set up these major championships. You know,
Speaker 4: I find it interesting that, you know, the major golf
Speaker 4: associations pick some of these out of the box sites
Speaker 4: that kind of don't fit into the wing foot Oakmont,
Speaker 4: Southern Hills, Pebble Beach, you know what I mean, the
Speaker 4: typical ROTA, and and they pick them five years before
Speaker 4: they play them, and then they spend three or five
Speaker 4: million dollars getting the course ready for the event. There's
Speaker 4: a degree of standardization that I get discomforted by. I'm
Speaker 4: not doing very good naming courses that I think should
Speaker 4: be uh, you know, major sites.
Speaker 1: It's okay, it's a question.
Speaker 2: I always always think about it. Yeah, but one of
Speaker 2: the big problems is the ball. You know, it goes
Speaker 2: just too far for a lot of these courses. And
Speaker 2: then you also combined the infrastructure needed.
Speaker 4: You know, it's really the it's the great shame of
Speaker 4: the game that it's broken into two armed camps. There's
Speaker 4: a camp that loves the game of golf, and unfortunately
Speaker 4: that's the small camp now. And there's a camp that
Speaker 4: loves the business of golf, and the camp in the
Speaker 4: business of golf has so directly or indirectly intimidated the
Speaker 4: ruling bodies of golf that they won't take the step
Speaker 4: that is absolutely essential, and that is to slow down
Speaker 4: the ball. It's really a shame. It's the game's unfinest moment. Yeah,
Speaker 4: that this continues.
Speaker 2: I was out at Skochy yesterday. I was walking with
Speaker 2: a guy and he was like, man, how great would
Speaker 2: it be to see a major championship at this place?
Speaker 2: And It's like, it would be great. The greens are
Speaker 2: unbelieve but you can't because the ball just goes too far.
Speaker 4: I think that's part of my answer of my inability
Speaker 4: to answer the question. There are dozens and dozens of
Speaker 4: courses like Skokie that I would love to see if
Speaker 4: we could just turn the clock back to the late
Speaker 4: sixties and the players had to hit into a green.
Speaker 4: What Nicholas and players like that were hitting into a green?
Speaker 4: That would be my dream to see that happen. But
Speaker 4: you know that will never happen, And so that makes
Speaker 4: it hard for me to answer which one would you
Speaker 4: like to see a major event at? Because I'd like
Speaker 4: to see a major event at hundreds of them, but
Speaker 4: not with today's equipment. Yeah, I believe that. I believe
Speaker 4: that working the ball is part of the game, and
Speaker 4: I'm going to go to my grave thinking it should
Speaker 4: be part of the game. And like on the tour,
Speaker 4: now it's not. It's just power golf. But I think
Speaker 4: a guy standing up on a tee reading the hole
Speaker 4: and saying I want to cut this one, or standing
Speaker 4: up on the tee and I want to turn this
Speaker 4: the other way, and and here's an angle of a green.
Speaker 4: I can fail positively by hitting a fade, because if
Speaker 4: I fail to hit a fade and hit it straight,
Speaker 4: I'm putting. It's a longer put. But if I am
Speaker 4: a successful hitting a fade, I'm putting for birdie. So
Speaker 4: the equipment thing is just just overwhelming. I mean, I
Speaker 4: have clients say to me, why are you worried about
Speaker 4: the angles and and this stuff? These these young kids
Speaker 4: and our good players, they never even think about that.
Speaker 4: And I say, well, I think we still should think
Speaker 4: about it, and we should try to, you know, make
Speaker 4: it a part of their game as much as it's
Speaker 4: a part of players who don't hit it as far.
Speaker 4: And I think the restoration thing is maybe refining itself
Speaker 4: a little to either moving some bunkers down a fairway
Speaker 4: so that the original intent of the design is recaptured,
Speaker 4: or maybe adding a few more bunkers in the correct
Speaker 4: style so the original intent, the intent of the original
Speaker 4: design is captured. Because just if you think of it, andy,
Speaker 4: just taking a plan or having an old aerial and
Speaker 4: putting the bunkers back the fairway, bunkers back exactly where they.
Speaker 2: Are, isn't Yeah, I had people.
Speaker 4: I've had people say to me, are you really restoring
Speaker 4: the intent of the original design? And I have to
Speaker 4: I have to admit they make a good point.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's I agree with that because like the tents,
Speaker 2: intent's been lost with a lot of the technology, so
Speaker 2: you'd need to move bunkers into different places in order
Speaker 2: to regain that intent.
Speaker 4: And see, that's why I think that one of the
Speaker 4: more important rules about design is sit down and breathe
Speaker 4: deeply and think a little bit about it. Sometimes it's
Speaker 4: right to put original bunkers back exactly where they were,
Speaker 4: but to just stick on that goal probably doesn't restore
Speaker 4: the original intent of play. Just like go into an
Speaker 4: old course and saying, ah, this place is old, I'm
Speaker 4: just going to do the modern thing here. That probably
Speaker 4: is too quick of a knee jerk reaction, you know,
Speaker 4: just like the players who need to think for that
Speaker 4: five seconds we determined standing on a tee, the guys
Speaker 4: with the pencils in their hands need to think for
Speaker 4: a few minutes. Where does some of the original stuff
Speaker 4: work in terms of bunker placement? And look, if I
Speaker 4: could do a course a third and eighth a tenth
Speaker 4: as good as any of the Golden Ages, I'd be
Speaker 4: very proud of myself. But I don't think it's wrong
Speaker 4: to say that original set of bunkers just doesn't work
Speaker 4: for the modern game. Is there a net? And then
Speaker 4: the job becomes how can I find a natural spot?
Speaker 4: Because a lot of times they were placing their bunkers
Speaker 4: in nice natural spots for bunkers where there were up
Speaker 4: slopes where they could just cut a hole in the ground.
Speaker 4: It became a good bunker. It didn't look artificial, It
Speaker 4: looked like it's set into the landscape. Is there a
Speaker 4: spot where I can recreate that same feel by putting
Speaker 4: it into an upslope, whether the grade works or can
Speaker 4: I build an up slope that when it's grassed people
Speaker 4: will think it was always there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I would that nothing looks better than natural bunkers.
Speaker 2: And so we do this.
Speaker 4: My test, my test for my guy and the bulldozer
Speaker 4: is I just say to him and they laugh. Now
Speaker 4: they're used to it, but I say, is that a
Speaker 4: comfortable bunker? And I say, what do you mean? I said, well,
Speaker 4: does that? And you know, you go to these courses
Speaker 4: where bunkers have been added further down holes, or you
Speaker 4: go to courses built in the sixties what I call
Speaker 4: the age of golf course engineering rather than golf course architecture.
Speaker 4: But it continues today. There are people who still follow
Speaker 4: that inspiration of the sixties. They may disguise it by
Speaker 4: ripping the edges of their bunkers, but they're still basically
Speaker 4: sixties golf courses. You know, fade bunkers are all the
Speaker 4: exact same distance from the tee. Hook bunkers are all
Speaker 4: the exact same distance from the tee. And you'll see
Speaker 4: some of these bunkers where they're built on a reverse slope.
Speaker 4: That reverse slope just happened to be the right distance
Speaker 4: from the tee. And you know, there's a berm that's
Speaker 4: twelve feet high behind the bunker holding it up. Hopefully,
Speaker 4: if you're working in a restorative manner, you can get
Speaker 4: a comfortable bunker. Or I'll say to the guys, does
Speaker 4: that bunker look like it's supposed to be there? I
Speaker 4: think that's the other thing. It's not only put in
Speaker 4: the bunker in the same spot that the Golden Ager
Speaker 4: had it on the plan, or putting it in a
Speaker 4: spot that has the same impact on the whole is
Speaker 4: what the Golden Ager was thinking. It's can you detail
Speaker 4: it so it looks like it's been there for a
Speaker 4: long time and wasn't built three weeks ago last Tuesday?
Speaker 2: Yeah, naturalness. So we have this segment that we wrap
Speaker 2: up these podcasts with called Overrated, Underrated and all. We'll
Speaker 2: give you a couple of topics and you just say
Speaker 2: if you think that are overrated or underrated, and you
Speaker 2: can give like a quick, short kind of.
Speaker 4: Explanation as to your answer, Andy, you haven't been listening
Speaker 4: if you think I can give a quick and short explanation.
Speaker 4: But I'm gonna try my best.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's so Herbert Strong the architect.
Speaker 4: Oh, I'll be honest with you. I'm gonna go in
Speaker 4: between overrated and underrated.
Speaker 2: You're going properly.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I would. I would just say he's an in between.
Speaker 4: You know, That's what I think.
Speaker 2: Okay, grass bunkers, I.
Speaker 4: Think they're a little overrated. I have a lot I
Speaker 4: have clubs. I have clubs that want to convert sand
Speaker 4: bunkers into grass bunkers, and in most of the situations
Speaker 4: where they want to do that, it's not an even
Speaker 4: trade visually or strategically or helping players recognize the angles
Speaker 4: and so forth. You know, there's been a lot of
Speaker 4: I'm going to there's just one more paragraph. There's a
Speaker 4: lot of talk about bunkers today, maintenance costs and all
Speaker 4: that kind of stuff. But they're a part of golf,
Speaker 4: and I'm not sure that everyone can be replaced by
Speaker 4: either a tree or a grass bunker.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I would agree with that. I do like grass bunkers.
Speaker 2: I think that are they're really tough for the good player,
Speaker 2: and they're a little bit more playable than regular bunkers
Speaker 2: for the average and beginner.
Speaker 4: Yeah. I think it's just it they're positioning and maybe
Speaker 4: they're part of a bunker group or something like that
Speaker 4: is kind of an important thing to consider.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So how about the blind t shot.
Speaker 4: It's dramatically underrated. It makes me insane how the degree
Speaker 4: to which they're rejected and considered a bad thing. And
Speaker 4: I would say the same thing for the blind shot
Speaker 4: to agree. It makes me crazy that they are so
Speaker 4: rejected and disliked. It's a shot in golf. I got
Speaker 4: to tell you Andy, when I reviewed. When I read
Speaker 4: a review of a course that starts out with this
Speaker 4: is a great course. Everything is right out in front
Speaker 4: of you, I rarely finish the review. I never have
Speaker 4: any interest in seeing that course.
Speaker 2: You like to have a little bit of a thrill.
Speaker 2: And there's that feel of a blind shot or rolling
Speaker 2: up to like a punch bowl green that's blind on
Speaker 2: an alpsole and wondering where your ball is that can't
Speaker 2: be replaced.
Speaker 4: No, tell me that. When you're walking and you hit
Speaker 4: a shot to a blind green that's a punch bowl.
Speaker 4: You don't throw the iron back in the bag and
Speaker 4: then double time it up the hill. Yeah, Or if
Speaker 4: you're forced to, you get in the cart and you
Speaker 4: don't floor it to get around the corner. Two or
Speaker 4: three years ago, four years ago, I went to southern
Speaker 4: Scotland and I played a course called Nairn that has
Speaker 4: about twenty blind shots. It is one of my five
Speaker 4: favorite golf courses in the world. It was unbelievably great,
Speaker 4: and I would think that most people would say, and
Speaker 4: it's only because I love blind shots that that that
Speaker 4: that's not a good thing. You know, you got to
Speaker 4: love it. If it's a blind shot to a green,
Speaker 4: more often than not, there's some degree of punch bowl
Speaker 4: character to one side or all of the green, and
Speaker 4: so a hack like me, I can miss the green
Speaker 4: and it ends up twelve feet from the pins. See,
Speaker 4: that's one thing that we've forgotten. Golf is supposed to
Speaker 4: be fun, and I think blind shots are wicked fun.
Speaker 2: It's yeah, I like blind shots.
Speaker 4: I'm a fan, and I can't believe the percentage of
Speaker 4: better drives I hit on a blind shot because I
Speaker 4: have to concentrate. You're making yourself concentrate so much more
Speaker 4: on somehow picking a line, And I would say, more
Speaker 4: often than not, I hit one of my better drives
Speaker 4: of the day because it's made me focus. There's nothing
Speaker 4: wrong with something that makes you hit one of your
Speaker 4: better drives of the day.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I agree. What about ocean and water views.
Speaker 4: I think they could not be more spectacularly overrated.
Speaker 2: I agree, I think they take they take away from
Speaker 2: the architecture. They're awesome when combined with great architecture, but
Speaker 2: they make average holes very perceived great.
Speaker 4: Right before I take my last breath, somebody's gonna hand
Speaker 4: me a piece of paper, and it's a rating of
Speaker 4: pebble beach that got after the course got moved fifty
Speaker 4: miles inland.
Speaker 2: It wouldn't be as good.
Speaker 4: Huh, Well, I would think it might be different. Yeah,
Speaker 4: but I feel that way about you know, courses set
Speaker 4: at the base of mountain, uh, set in sand dunes
Speaker 4: and stuff like that. I And I know they can't
Speaker 4: do it. I know they can't. I know it's too
Speaker 4: hard to do. And I'm not even being a wise guy,
Speaker 4: But if the raiders just looked at the tops of
Speaker 4: the t's, the tops of the fairways, the tops of
Speaker 4: the greens and the ankles, and the variety that they
Speaker 4: introduced into the round of golf, I'd like to see
Speaker 4: the ratings in those circumstances.
Speaker 2: I'm curious. I played Fisher's Island in Chicago Golf in
Speaker 2: a week span for the first time on each of them.
Speaker 2: How would you compare the two of.
Speaker 4: Those, Oh, I'm I. I don't like to directly compare. Ye,
Speaker 4: And if if you were gonna, if you if you
Speaker 4: told me that you were, how how did you want
Speaker 4: to play golf at me, at my at my selection?
Speaker 4: Out of the those two, I would tell you to
Speaker 4: pick me up at O'Hare.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's why I feel the same. So I think,
Speaker 2: like I always look at these courses and if I
Speaker 2: have to compare, is like dividing, you know, dividing ten rounds.
Speaker 2: How would I would divide ten rounds? And I've thought
Speaker 2: about that one more than almost anyone. And I think
Speaker 2: I'd go six or six four or seven three Chicago Golf.
Speaker 4: I would just say, pick me up at O'Hare.
Speaker 2: Andy, that place is one of the most architecturally sound
Speaker 2: golf courses I've ever seen. Probably ever, it probably is
Speaker 2: the most.
Speaker 4: And and and when nuts like you and I say
Speaker 4: things like that, we should say, and it's on a
Speaker 4: non descript site, is that correct?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I think it. I think it's I think the
Speaker 2: site that is on is underrated. I think people say
Speaker 2: it's a bad site, but it's a pretty good site.
Speaker 4: But you know, relative to these other world fare sites.
Speaker 2: Andy, relative deficientcy Island. Yeah, that has water views on
Speaker 2: every whole.
Speaker 4: Yes, yes, yeah, yeah so. And that's another thing that
Speaker 4: I find interesting is someone will go to a course,
Speaker 4: well it's not much of a course, and I said, well,
Speaker 4: what do you mean. He said, well, the site, it's
Speaker 4: just flat. I think sin Andrew's a fairly strategic golf course.
Speaker 4: There's nothing really special about that site. I think the
Speaker 4: site is too often an easy excuse on flat land.
Speaker 4: I honestly can't figure out why for Arda doesn't have
Speaker 4: five hundred great golf courses.
Speaker 2: Well. I think the thing I noticed is you can
Speaker 2: really tell the skill of an architect with how they
Speaker 2: what they do with flat land, like.
Speaker 4: No doubt you. I won't try to say it better,
Speaker 4: you just said it great. And I think too often
Speaker 4: things like well the developer wanted this, well, the developer
Speaker 4: wanted a hired penal golf course while the land was flat.
Speaker 4: I just think sometimes they're excuses that are too convenient
Speaker 4: because you're on a flat piece of land. These holes
Speaker 4: I'm talking about at Shinnecock, they're unrelatively flat piece a
Speaker 4: flat piece of land, and they're great golf courses because
Speaker 4: they have the angles and the strategy. And in Florida
Speaker 4: you could do any degree of angles, any amount of
Speaker 4: sinewy fair way, the green angles could be anything. And basically,
Speaker 4: what do you see. There's a fade bunker at a
Speaker 4: certain distance, there's a hook bunker at a certain distance,
Speaker 4: and then at the green there's a green or a
Speaker 4: bunker at three o'clock, nine o'clock and twelve o'clock. Well,
Speaker 4: they're just, they're just they're golf course engineering and not
Speaker 4: golf course design.
Speaker 2: It goes to your whole adage of when it was developed.
Speaker 2: It was developed. Those courses were developed from nineteen fifty,
Speaker 2: primarily nineteen fifty through nineteen ninety five.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it was the age of golf course engineering.
Speaker 2: Yep, not architecture.
Speaker 4: So no, you could never you could never say that
Speaker 4: it was. It was let's slap it in quick and
Speaker 4: get to the next victim.
Speaker 2: Yep. So, Brian, I really appreciate the time, and that
Speaker 2: was a lot of fun. We'll have to do it
Speaker 2: again sometime. I feel like we only touched on about
Speaker 2: ten percent of the topics I wanted to get to.
Speaker 4: Yeah, my answers that go on and on forever will
Speaker 4: limit the amount of questions, so I'll just tell you
Speaker 4: one thing. I'll be looking at that phone call to
Speaker 4: telling me when I should get to O'Hare to play
Speaker 4: the course I chose over the one that's on the island.
Speaker 2: I'll be uh, I'll be trying to figure out when
Speaker 2: I can get out there again.
Speaker 4: All right, big guy, Hey, good talking to you. Thank you.